PaaS: .NET vs Java EE

Windows Azure and PaaS for the .NET WorldEver since the beginning of this century a comparison between the platform capabilities of Java EE (Java Enterprise Edition) and Microsoft .NET has been a common discussion when choosing an enterprise platforms.

With the advent of Cloud, Microsoft has taken a lead with the Windows Azure PaaS (Platform as a Service).

Many key decision makers for cloud enablement now have questions on how good an equivalent the Java EE platform could be.

Windows Azure StackFrom a platform perspective Windows Azure provides a complete list of options that are available to.NET developers in a ‘On Premise' setup, which includes:

Full support for .NET framework and languages like C#, Visual Basic

Web development using ASP.NET

Distributed processing using WCF (Windows Communication Framework)

Enterprise database support with SQL Azure

Data access services using ADO.NET and LINQ

Rich Internet Application support using Silverlight

Above all is out-of-the box support from .NET IDE VisualStudio, which provides customized templates for the development and deployment of applications to cloud.

Windows Azure acts as a robust PaaS in the sense that with the support from Visual Studio we could develop, configure and publish a package from an end-to-end perspective to the Azure platform.

Java EE PaaS OptionsThe Java counterpart of the .NET platform, referred to earlier as J2EE, is now called Java EE and it offers several enterprise class features for multi-tiered enterprise development. Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) 6 is the industry standard for enterprise Java computing. Utilize the new, lightweight Java EE 6 Web Profile to create next-generation web applications, and the full power of the Java EE 6 platform for enterprise applications. Developers will benefit from productivity improvements with more annotations, more POJOs, simplified packaging, and less XML configuration. The following are some of the PaaS offering for Java EE in Cloud.

1. Google App Engine for JavaGoogle App Engine enables you to build and host web apps on the same systems that power Google applications. App Engine offers fast development and deployment; simple administration, with no need to worry about hardware, patches or backups; and effortless scalability.

Google App Engine provides a PaaS environment for both Java EE and Python. The following features are supported especially for Java EE:

The Java environment provides a Java 6 JVM, a Java Servlets interface, and support for standard interfaces to the App Engine scalable datastore and services, such as JDO, JPA, JavaMail, and JCache.

Much like Visual Studio for Azure, Google App Engine for the Java EE Platform is supported by the Eclipse IDE for simplified development and deployment of Java EE applications.

Unsupported Features in Google App Engine:

Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) is not supported as part of the Google Apps Engine

A UI development framework like JSF (JavaServer Faces) is not directly supported

Other Java EE standards like JMS (Messaging Service) and Web Service Specifications

CIO, CTO & Developer Resources

2. Makara (Red Hat) PaaS PlatformThe Makara Cloud Application Platform is the first intelligent auto-scaling solution for applications in the cloud that doesn't require templates to be tweaked or scripts to be written and maintained. Create rich, collaborative Custom Cloud 2 apps fast without buying hardware or installing software. Force.com provide a complete platform with a simplified programming model.

The Makara Platform enables organizations to deploy, manage, monitor and scale their Java and LAMP applications on both public and private clouds, such as Amazon EC2 and VMware-based Clouds, without any modifications.

Currently supported software components include:

Apache

MySQL

PHP

Java

Tomcat

JBoss

Much like the Google App Engine, enterprise Java EE features such as JMS and EJB are not available in the Makara platform and also the reference implementations and case studies have yet to evolve.

3. Force.comSalesForce is a leading provider of the SaaS platform for customer relationship management on Cloud. They also have a PaaS offering Force.com that give developers a platform to create rich, collaborative Custom Cloud 2 apps fast without buying hardware or installing software. Force.com provides a complete platform with a simplified programming model.

The development platform of Force.com, called Apex, is ‘Java Like' but not truly Java.

With Force.com, you get a full enterprise application development stack including a complete user interface to your data, comprehensive reporting and analytic capabilities, a flexible security and sharing model, and workflow and approvals - all available and integrated from the start. You can even leverage extended features such as built-in internationalization, full support for mobile devices, and integration with existing systems.

Some of the pros that makes it convenient for Java EE developers are :

Eclipse-based IDE

Syntax similar to Java EE

Web services support

Standard MVC design

HTML and other web technologies such as AJAX and CSS

From a classic perspective, Force.com is not a Java EE platform but the similarities are enough for it to be considered as a PaaS choice by Java EE developers.

4. Amazon EC2 + IBM StackThis is not a PaaS offering but rather a customized IaaS offering. However, for the sake of choice for Java EE on Cloud, this is still a strong contender.

Amazon EC2 presents a true virtual computing environment that allows you to use web service interfaces to launch instances with a variety of operating systems, load them with your custom application environment, manage your network's access permissions, and run your image using as many or few systems as you desire.

Amazon EC2 enables partners and customers to build and customize Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) with software based on their needs. IBM and Amazon Web Services have teamed up to provide the ability to use Amazon EC2 to run several IBM platform technologies such as WebSphere Application Server, which provides a Java EE platform.

ConclusionJava EE PaaS offerings are evolving and we'll see more players in the future. However, due to full support from the Azure platform, .NET as a PaaS is fully mature. But the above mentioned Java EE PaaS will support developer needs.

SYS-CON Events announced today that Keisoku Research Consultant Co. will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Keisoku Research Consultant, Co. offers research and consulting in a wide range of civil engineering-related fields from information construction to preservation of cultural properties. For more information, vi...

SYS-CON Events announced today that Interface Corporation will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Interface Corporation is a company developing, manufacturing and marketing high quality and wide variety of industrial computers and interface modules such as PCIs and PCI express. For more information, visit http://www.i...

SYS-CON Events announced today that MIRAI Inc. will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
MIRAI Inc. are IT consultants from the public sector whose mission is to solve social issues by technology and innovation and to create a meaningful future for people.

SYS-CON Events announced today that Fusic will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Fusic Co. provides mocks as virtual IoT devices. You can customize mocks, and get any amount of data at any time in your test. For more information, visit https://fusic.co.jp/english/.

Smart cities have the potential to change our lives at so many levels for citizens: less pollution, reduced parking obstacles, better health, education and more energy savings. Real-time data streaming and the Internet of Things (IoT) possess the power to turn this vision into a reality. However, most organizations today are building their data infrastructure to focus solely on addressing immediate business needs vs. a platform capable of quickly adapting emerging technologies to address future ...

SYS-CON Events announced today that Taica will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Taica manufacturers Alpha-GEL brand silicone components and materials, which maintain outstanding performance over a wide temperature range -40C to +200C. For more information, visit http://www.taica.co.jp/english/.

In his session at @ThingsExpo, Greg Gorman is the Director, IoT Developer Ecosystem, Watson IoT, will provide a short tutorial on Node-RED, a Node.js-based programming tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services in new and interesting ways. It provides a browser-based editor that makes it easy to wire together flows using a wide range of nodes in the palette that can be deployed to its runtime in a single-click.
There is a large library of contributed nodes that help so...

SYS-CON Events announced today that Daiya Industry will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Daiya Industry specializes in orthotic support systems and assistive devices with pneumatic artificial muscles in order to contribute to an extended healthy life expectancy.
For more information, please visit https://www.daiyak...

What is the best strategy for selecting the right offshore company for your business?
In his session at 21st Cloud Expo, Alan Winters, U.S. Head of Business Development at MobiDev, will discuss the things to look for - positive and negative - in evaluating your options. He will also discuss how to maximize productivity with your offshore developers.
Before you start your search, clearly understand your business needs and how that impacts software choices.

SYS-CON Events announced today that SIGMA Corporation will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
uLaser flow inspection device from the Japanese top share to Global Standard! Then, make the best use of data to flip to next page. For more information, visit http://www.sigma-k.co.jp/en/.

SYS-CON Events announced today that Yuasa System will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Yuasa System is introducing a multi-purpose endurance testing system for flexible displays, OLED devices, flexible substrates, flat cables, and films in smartphones, wearables, automobiles, and healthcare.

SYS-CON Events announced today that B2Cloud will exhibit at SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
B2Cloud specializes in IoT devices for preventive and predictive maintenance in any kind of equipment retrieving data like Energy consumption, working time, temperature, humidity, pressure, etc.

SYS-CON Events announced today that NetApp has been named “Bronze Sponsor” of SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
NetApp is the data authority for hybrid cloud. NetApp provides a full range of hybrid cloud data services that simplify management of applications and data across cloud and on-premises environments to accelerate digital transformation. Together with their partners, NetApp em...

SYS-CON Events announced today that Ryobi Systems will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Ryobi Systems Co., Ltd., as an information service company, specialized in business support for local governments and medical industry. We are challenging to achive the precision farming with AI. For more information, visit http:...

SYS-CON Events announced today that mruby Forum will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
mruby is the lightweight implementation of the Ruby language. We introduce mruby and the mruby IoT framework that enhances development productivity. For more information, visit http://forum.mruby.org/.

SYS-CON Events announced today that Enroute Lab will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Enroute Lab is an industrial design, research and development company of unmanned robotic vehicle system. For more information, please visit http://elab.co.jp/.

Real IoT production deployments running at scale are collecting sensor data from hundreds / thousands / millions of devices. The goal is to take business-critical actions on the real-time data and find insights from stored datasets.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, John Walicki, Watson IoT Developer Advocate at IBM Cloud, will provide a fast-paced developer journey that follows the IoT sensor data from generation, to edge gateway, to edge analytics, to encryption, to the IBM Bluemix cloud, to Wa...

Okay, so my vacations don’t necessary seem like other folks’ vacations. Yes, we relax. Yes, we spend too much money. Yes, we eat too much food. But for some reason, unusual learning opportunities pop up during our vacations, and this year’s vacation was no different. This year’s vacation theme was… logistics.
Our logistics foray started by watching the artsy-fartsy movie “The Lunchbox.” I hate artsy-fartsy movies, but my wife insists on watching them on vacation. The movie was excellent. However, I was totally mesmerized by the lunchbox delivery system that was a featured part of the movie. T...

Our cities have been connected since the dawn of urbanization in the Indus Valley and on the plains of Mesopotamia nearly ten millennia ago. Cities exist to gather and connect people, bringing us together into communities and joint ventures that need complex networks of communication. But in recent years the connected city has come to mean something more. Today and in the future, the connected city will not just be about people connecting with people, but people with machines, people with people via machines, and perhaps most importantly, machines with machines.

These days, APIs have become an integral part of the digital transformation journey for all enterprises. Every digital innovation story is connected to APIs . But have you ever pondered over to know what are the source of these APIs? Let me explain - APIs sources can be varied, internal or external, solving different purposes, but mostly categorized into the following two categories. Data lakes is a term used to represent disconnected but relevant data that are used by various business units within an enterprise. APIs are created as the easy access points for these siloed data lakes.

Every time there’s a notable cybersecurity breach, someone (even me) writes a comprehensive primer on the proper way to create “secure” passwords. Lather, rinse, repeat. Until a few years ago, everyone (including me) based their password advice on a 2003 paper from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), with the catchy title “NIST Special Publication 800-63.” The paper recommended that passwords be cryptic, contain special characters, and be as close to nonsense as possible.

“Self-driving cars are the future of ride-sharing,” proclaimed an industry expert who shall remain nameless. The comment struck me as ridiculous. From my point of view, Uber (and all car services) already provide self-driving cars. You don’t drive the car; the driver does. Do you really care whether the car is controlled by a human/machine partnership or it’s an autonomous mechanical device? Other than to acknowledge that you are the person the car is supposed to pick up, you don’t need to speak to the human driver any more than you would need to speak to the natural language–understanding alg...

It takes years – sometimes a lifetime – to perfect certain skills in life: hitting a jump shot off the dribble, nailing that double high C on the trumpet, parallel parking a Ford Expedition. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book, “Outliers,” discussing the amount of work – 10,000 hours – required to perfect a skill (while the exactness of 10,000 hours has come under debate, it is still a useful point that people need to invest considerable time and effort to master a skill). But once we get comfortable with something that we feel that we have mastered, we become reluctant to change. We are reluctant t...

Agile has finally jumped the technology shark, expanding outside the software world. Enterprises are now increasingly adopting Agile practices across their organizations in order to successfully navigate the disruptive waters that threaten to drown them. In our quest for establishing change as a core competency in our organizations, this business-centric notion of Agile is an essential component of Agile Digital Transformation.
In the years since the publication of the Agile Manifesto, the connection between building better software and business agility has been a tenuous one at best. But now...

Internet of @ThingsExpo, taking place October 31 - November 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, is co-located with 21st Cloud Expo and will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading industry players in the world.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is the most profound change in personal and enterprise IT since the creation of the Worldwide Web more than 20 years ago.
All major researchers estimate there will be tens of billions devices - computers, smartphones, tablets, and sensors - connected to the Internet by 2020. This number w...

I’ve always felt that bringing an economics perspective to our big data and digital transformation discussions is more important than a traditional accounting or even information technology (IT) perspective. Heck, I believe that a Chief Data Officer’s background should be more along the lines of economics than IT. Economics brings a forward-looking perspective on creating value (wealth). In fact, economics is defined as “the branch of knowledge concerned with the production, consumption, and transfer (capture) of wealth.”

SYS-CON Events announced today that DXWorldExpo has been named “Global Sponsor” of SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Digital Transformation is the key issue driving the global enterprise IT business. Digital Transformation is most prominent among Global 2000 enterprises and government institutions.

Floyd “Money” Mayweather made headlines last weekend for making light work of Mixed Martial Arts superstar Conor McGregor. But he also made tech headlines recently by endorsing the Hubii Network, an initial coin offering (ICO), on his Instagram and Twitter accounts.
This isn’t the first time Mayweather (who’s dubbed himself Floyd “Crypto” Mayweather) has endorsed an ICO. In late July, he promoted the ICO for the Stox project, which went on to raise more than $30 million in its token sale. (BTW: There are subtle differences between an ICO, a token sale, and a crowdsale, although the terms are ...

With major technology companies and startups seriously embracing Cloud strategies, now is the perfect time to attend 21st Cloud Expo October 31 - November 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, and June 12-14, 2018, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, and learn what is going on, contribute to the discussions, and ensure that your enterprise is on the right path to Digital Transformation.

In recent years AI has grown significantly and become a substantial area of business investment. What has changed, and how does this affect you?
For a long time, artificial intelligence was pure science fiction, relegated to books, television and movies—and you don’t need us to tell you that we are well past that point today. In the last few years we have seen extremely rapid advancement in a series of technologies that have come together to unlock a wave of AI investment. According to Accenture, 85% of executives plan to invest extensively in AI in the next three years, and in the same tim...

With major technology companies and startups seriously embracing Cloud strategies, now is the perfect time to attend 21st Cloud Expo October 31 - November 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, and June 12-14, 2018, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, and learn what is going on, contribute to the discussions, and ensure that your enterprise is on the right path to Digital Transformation.

No hype cycles or predictions of a gazillion things here. IoT is here. You get it. You know your business and have great ideas for a business transformation strategy. What comes next? Time to make it happen. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Jay Mason, an Associate Partner of Analytics, IoT & Cybersecurity at M&S Consulting, will present a step-by-step plan to develop your technology implementation strategy. He will discuss the evaluation of communication standards and IoT messaging protocols, data analytics considerations, edge-to-cloud technical architecture, IoT platform selection, end-to-end...

My discussions with organizations looking to “digitally transform” themselves is yielding some interesting observations. I expect that when these discussions move into the execution phase, we will start to create some “Laws of Digital Transformation” that will guide organizations digital transformation journey. So with that in mind, let me start by proposing these “4 Laws of Digital Transformation.”

Today’s businesses run in the virtual world. From virtual machines to chatbots to Bitcoin, physical has become last century’s modus operandi. Dealing with this type of change in business even has its own buzzword – Digital Transformation. From an information technology operations point of view, this has been manifested by organizations increasingly placing applications, virtual servers, storage platforms, networks, managed services and other assets in multiple cloud environments. Managing these virtual assets can be much more challenging than it was with traditional physical assets in your ...

On October 2016, Dyn, a Domain Name Server (DNS) company was the target of a massive coordinated distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack leaving the world not able to connect to popular websites such as Twitter, Amazon.com, BBC, Reddit, Spotify, and more. DDoS attacks occur when multiple resources flood the bandwidth and/or resources of a targeted system which in turn overloads it, preventing it from fulfilling legitimate requests. This attack was carried out by installing malware on Internet of Things (IoT) enabled devices including baby monitors and cameras. Although IoT is touted as a p...

SYS-CON Events announced today that JETRO will showcase Japan Digital Transformation Pavilion at SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 - Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. The Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) is a non-profit organization that provides business support services to companies expanding to Japan. With the support of JETRO's dedicated staff, clients can incorporate their business; receive visa, immigration, and HR support; find dedicated office space; identify local government subsidies; get tailored ma...

Cloud computing budgets worldwide are reaching into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and no organization can survive long without some sort of cloud migration strategy. Each month brings new announcements, use cases, and success stories.